Hi I've been reading the posts on this forum for sometime now. I just wonder about all those people who sought answers to relationship questions. How useful were the Iching answers? Did those people move on from their partner/spouse/object of desire or re-concile based on the answers provided by Iching?

Its always easy to go back and say our interpretation of Iching is not good enough. But if the hexagrams are really that difficult to interpret and cannot help us or guide us and more often than not, mislead us, then what good is this divinition? What purpose does it serve?

I recently stumbled upon a message on the internet wherein this Man rued himself for relying too much on "divinition tools" such as tarot, iching, runes and felt they had destroyed his life and his relationships.

If these troubled hearts seeking answers to relationshiop problems had sought answers directly from their partners or relied on their good practical sense instead of the Iching (that only seems to create a web of intrigue) perhaps they would not be so jaded or disappointed.

Is Iching just a tool to soothe our troubled minds or is there any divinition in it at all?

Is Iching mere synchronicity or divinition?

Can people share their experience?

I am new to this, but i have found that my good practical sense and my readings are similar. sometimes it seems like it is a reinforcement of what i already know to be true. I know when i am stretching it too far, because i am looking for a yes or no answer or too much concrete future telling. I think it could be overused and sometimes I do go a bit neurotic with it. I have found in my case, that my readings line up with advice given from friends and my own intuition. so for me, it is a poetically restated version of my own true gut feeling. it comforts me, also, because it reminds me of the flow of time and the larger picture and to take care of my own spiritual needs.

Just read the forums if you truly want to learn about other peoples' experience with the various divination tools available and then try them yourself. The main problem here is that a skeptic is a very hard person to convince.

shubslola said:

Hi I've been reading the posts on this forum for sometime now. I just wonder about all those people who sought answers to relationship questions. How useful were the Iching answers? Did those people move on from their partner/spouse/object of desire or re-concile based on the answers provided by Iching?

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In the factual sense theres no way of knowing since people rarely come back to give updates, but my feeling is people tend to act precisely as they would have if they had never consulted the oracle when it comes to the kinds of relationship questions we see most frequently here at least. Thats for several reasons, firstly they are often newbies who just want quick feedback and aren't that bothered about understanding for themselves. For that reason I feel the advice they receive is probably taken as pretty throw away - which is undoubtedly a good thing ! (and i include my own in that ) Also most of these questions seem to be about negotiating/handling loss and rejection - even if they are phrased very differently - and if a person is not ready to let go nothing on earth will convince them to let go, certainly no advice here.

Its always easy to go back and say our interpretation of Iching is not good enough. But if the hexagrams are really that difficult to interpret and cannot help us or guide us and more often than not, mislead us, then what good is this divinition? What purpose does it serve?
I recently stumbled upon a message on the internet wherein this Man rued himself for relying too much on "divinition tools" such as tarot, iching, runes and felt they had destroyed his life and his relationships.

If these troubled hearts seeking answers to relationshiop problems had sought answers directly from their partners or relied on their good practical sense instead of the Iching (that only seems to create a web of intrigue) perhaps they would not be so jaded or disappointed.

Click to expand...

Good points. Yes I don't know how much purpose divination as it is revealed in the friends shared area has at all and i guess i never will. Personally i find it interesting to read others interpretatons and it all goes to make a great hexagram index for future reference, but I agree with you in that i do wonder if the actual querants wouldn't have done better half the time to speak with their lovers/crushes etc And I agree about the 'web of intrigue' syndrome - worse case scenario here is always that some poor **** is led to believe in a happy ever after when there isn't - but still there is a disclaimer .....

Is Iching just a tool to soothe our troubled minds or is there any divinition in it at all?

Is Iching mere synchronicity or divinition?

Can people share their experience?

Click to expand...

I think divination with the Yi is very real and I have the sense of connection to a very real prescence when i consult it. I think it can sooth ones mind, but it can also unsettle and wake one up. There are plenty of unsoothing answers in the Yi even though some commentaries try to meld it all down and make every answer all nice and sweet lol. So to answer your questions, which I think are very valid, you have to take into account what you see in the friends area doesn't necessarily represent how longer term users of the Yi would see it.

Personally I think relationship questions/answers are always the least clear, the most open to fluctuation and if one is involved the hardest to interpret. The fact remains about 90% of questions there are about relationships and of these 85% we will never know what happened anyway - so the only point i see in it all is getting various angles on readings that might help widen the perspective of the querant or be of interest and use for readers in the future.

I find the timing of this question to be perfect with what I am processing right now. In defense of the IC, I agree with Trojan in that I too have a connection with the IC. But with all due respect, I would like to avoid relationship questions as I think I relied on the IC too much to gather information that should have been obtained from direct communication. But that's the thing about relationships - we are not always in a position to ask a direct question in the early stages of a relationship. Relationships in the early stages can be painful, and the IC can often help release the pressure from the vagaries of love and lust. Direct communication is the best form of communication - it keeps the obsessive neurosis of "what if" and "does X like me?" to a minimum. Big lesson here for me.

Laurie

My experience with IC is very limited, so I can only speak from gut feeling and experience with tarot.

I think that acting on the advice of an oracle, unless the advice seems "right", is misguided. Oracles can offer brilliant perspective on problems, but they can also offer answers that are hard to comprehend and/or hard to believe.

The moments of brilliance make the more confusing moments worth while. Some answers I've come across (in tarot) are strokes of genius that I likely would have never thought of without the cards. That doesn't make the cards "magic". It makes them useful. My suspicion is that IC works for similar reasons.

So yeah- if you are a skeptic, that's fine. So am I. But you need to realize that for an oracle to be useful, it doesn't actually have to be guided by spirits to answer your specific question: sometimes a system just has wisdom built into it, and it helps you to find the wisdom that you never knew was already within you.

-tb

relationships and the Yi

"Is Iching mere synchronicity or divinition?"

Synchronicity was Jung's notion to explain how the Yi could make such insightful oracles and still keep his Western academic assumptions.

Divination is the general term for obtaining answers to specific questions from abstract sources without objective voices.

Iching is a form of I Ching that appears in Google when folks key in itching but make a mistake in their key strokes. I was puzzled when a search of Google keywords came back with vaginal iching in the list. In some cases that is probably the correct designation for the not-so-useful divination answers you speak about.

When one is desperately, intensely, hung up on a relationship, and it isn't going as you expect, there is little in this world that will help you much. There was a recent book "He Just Isn't that Into You" which addressed most of those concerns.

In my own experience, it isn't until you are passed that hung up place that looking at the Yi oracle will help. Until then the best you can hope for is that the Yi will be kind and tell you nice things outside your current insanity.

However, if you are reasonably calm or basically sane about your relationship, the Yi oracle is quite amazing in its answers to questions like--What is happening with this relationship? The quality of the oracle answer is not so much a matter of the I Ching, as it is a combination of two essentials: What do you NEED the Yi to tell you? And how much do you understand about how the I Ching expresses itself through the oracle hexagrams .

If you have a clear commitment to some interpretation of the hexagrams you can get amazing results from an oracle answer that you have little need to know. If you truly need an answer, the Oracle will communicate to you regardless of your expertize to get you the answer you need to hear.

Frank

I agree that the IC can provide us insight and clarity. However, there is also a point when it is wisest to stop the readings when the answers are merely spinning you round and round. I could ask right now "where will the relationship go from here? and be possibly led to a place of hope, but in essence, the reality points to the fact that, as you put it, he's just not into me. My best decision at this point will be to read that book and not find the answer in another reading. Time to let go, in spite of the encouragement of the IC (for those of you who were following my saga - I had interesting readings that suggested he WAS into me). I've been trying to hard and wanting it too much.

I've just realized that this rant/post should've also been submitted under my other post in shared readings, entitled, "My final goodbye."

http://www.onlineclarity.co.uk/friends/showthread.php?t=5449

Laurie

Yi Oracles as reflexive relationship in general

Laurie,

"I agree that the IC can provide us insight and clarity. However, there is also a point when it is wisest to stop the readings when the answers are merely spinning you round and round."

I highlight that part of your post here, since if you are spinning round and round it is time to deal with the spin not the oracle. As to how to do that, I have only found getting several decades older as a surefire answer.

I put a post on your link about the specific oracle you cite.

More in general and including shubslola,

Relationship questions can be divided into two parts--
1)Those relationships where you can and do talk to the other party.
2) Those where their isn't any relationship to anyone else but only the party musing about what it might be or become.

In general if you are wondering about the Yi and relationship questions. The best next step is to pursue your relationship with the Oracle of the Yi itself. If you can work that out then you can expand that relationship to ask about any and all other relationships.

If not, perhaps you should consider what it means if you can not form the relationship you want with an abstract spirit that reflects your inmost self---where are your relationship issues coming from?

Don't believe in spirit? Then what do You call reflexive relationship within your own mind? The relationship with your own mind is the beginning of just about everything important to you.

Frank

I myself have been astonished to see how many people are asking the I Ching questions that they should be asking the person they are having a relationship with. It's as if I asked my neighbor what my husband would like for dinner.
Here's what I think: People have so many problems with relationships because they have not started with the most important one - the relationship they have with themselves. Until this relationship is loving and correct you will continue to have "problems" in any other relationship. Problems in relationships are not really problems. They are indications of where you need to change yourself (not the other person!) So we should stop thinking about relationship problems and start thinking about relationship opportunities.
It seems to me that the Yi is best consulted with an understanding of where it is leading you. It's like having a relationship with someone who is already perfectly centered - it will lead you to your center, your eternal spring of well-being and wisdom. What you do with the information it can give you is your choice. It's not going to work out all the little details in your life but it can show you a wiser way to live.

Instead of actually tossing coins and sticks, some websites on the internet offer Iching readings (along with tarot and runes). Some of these sites have clever animations that let you toss coins for an iching reading with the click of a mouse. The readings with changing lines are also explained. It feels so real!

How different can the experience be in having a reading delivered online or real-time?

The serious tone of spirituality, divinition, intuition is so totally lost as these readings are available dime a dozen at the click of a mouse. Thats not all most of these sites usually have a a disclaimer stating "For entertainment purposes only"!!!!

Can I be blamed for being a skeptic

shubslola said:

Can I be blamed for being a skeptic

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Of course not! Be a skeptic! But before you dismiss something that you are apparently interested in, open yourself up to it. A computerized oracle reading is.... limited. And I would say that the label "for entertainment only" is accurate for a computerized reading.

Interpreting oracles is a creative endeavor. Computers can't even pass the Turing test, so why should we expect them to be able to interpret an oracle in a way that will be meaningful to our very real human situations?

If you discard concepts because a computer can't do it right, then you will live without the concept of love...

...unless you use an Apple. Apple computers are build from rainbows, long walks on the beach and rainy days spent next to the fire.

-tb

Computers and Yi Oracle Spirit

thinbuddha said:

Of course not! Be a skeptic! But before you dismiss something that you are apparently interested in, open yourself up to it. A computerized oracle reading is.... limited. And I would say that the label "for entertainment only" is accurate for a computerized reading.

Interpreting oracles is a creative endeavor. Computers can't even pass the Turing test, so why should we expect them to be able to interpret an oracle in a way that will be meaningful to our very real human situations?

If you discard concepts because a computer can't do it right, then you will live without the concept of love...

...unless you use an Apple. Apple computers are build from rainbows, long walks on the beach and rainy days spent next to the fire.

-tb

Click to expand...

As to being a skeptic--- of what are you skeptical?

Is the online computer empowered to do magic and tell you the really, really good relationship Truth for you to rely upon absolutely and find yourself devastated when the actual relationship instead turns out like every other in your life?

Does the computer have access to the same bedside manner as a paid diviner person whose relationship to you is more interesting and important than any of the relationships you inquire into?

Is the computer oracle casting Real? Or just a mechanical mechanism to determine one of four possibilities 6 times?

The quick answer to that one is BOTH at the same time!

Does the computer have to pass a Turing Test that the text delivered feels to a human as relevant to that humans conversation as another human?

That one is easy but irrelevant--the computer only needs to be programed with what the human judge wants to hear and then it feeds those comments back as algebraic text variables in a pre-arranged format. Done with psychological interviews it can be most impressive--put fear into a psych prof friend of mine that his students' professional careers could be replaced by software.

What is real is the Yi Oracle you cast, by whatever means.

The rest is your relationship to the interpretation which is subject to many different views, some contradictory though all are real.

Computers are just automatic filing cabinets--they don't create an oracle interpretation they display the snippets of text databased for each hexagram and moving line.

Back in the day, I wrote I Ching Oracle casting and interpreting software (for Apple //e--mine didn't take long walks on the beach, but it did light up the monitor with an ethereal spirit personality).

The two questions with online I Ching readings are: How do they choose the oracle readings (RND function or calculation from some fast computer counter) and what interpretation text is stored for use in YOUR oracle.

In terms of relationship divination the two questions are: What are you asking about? And what difference will the answer make for you? If you focus well on what truly are the answers to those two relationship issues any divination source will work well.

I use two online I Ching casting sites. I don't bother with their interpretations, but they are delightful ways to quickly cast the Oracle and show me the hexagram markings, which I interpret myself. One just uses one click and goes to the oracle, the other lets me take the time to cast each line one-by-one and get into the horse race excitement of which line will come next and what oracle might be forming with the 6th line being the big betting opportunity on which will be the final outcome and how do I feel about the various options which might result.

Frank

fkegan said:

I use two online I Ching casting sites. I don't bother with their interpretations, but they are delightful ways to quickly cast the Oracle and show me the hexagram markings, which I interpret myself.

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Maybe I'm missing something here, but it sounds like you and I are on the same page. To me, it hardly matters how the hex or cards or runes are chosen- but the interpretation part is sticky. Someone just starting out with tarot, runes, i ching or whatever will have a hard time making sense of their own reading interpretations. If they rely on a computer to do this interpretation for them, then they will find an empty form letter of a response.

Of course, the future may be a very different place. One day, computers may exceed our abilities, even in mystical realms. Not yet, but maybe someday...

-tb

beginning a relationship with the Yi oracle

Actually, no, we are not at all on the same page. Determining the lines of an oracle is the most important part since if you throw two-headed coins, or use a computer program whose pseudo-random function gives every third questioner the same answer, you don't really have a Yi oracle. Getting a true oracle has always been a major issue: whether the answer is a direct connection between you and the Yi or just the empty forms without any real meaning.

The interpretation has many variations. Computers do not actually interpret any oracle, they are programmed to display the stored comments indexed to the hexagram number and moving line numbers. That is what most people do to interpret the Yi oracle. Drawing conclusions or applying an oracle to YOUR individual situation requires more than just having you think of a question and casting the line values, whether done by machine or by human.

When I programmed by Apple //e to interpret the Yi oracle, I added the wrinkle of analysis of the line values to yield standard oracle blurbs about the nuclear hexagram, the line pair situation, and six trigram scenarios for the oracle (desires felt as, seen as, feelings, goals, actions, and hopes) which were determined by the oracle, nuclear and resulting hexagram broken into trigrams.

The major issue for those new to divination is usually getting their questions straight or being in a calm and open frame of mind with a question whose answer they NEED to know.

Frank

I haven't really found the Yi texts to be speaking in clear cut language: analysis of a single reading seems to change depending on who is doing the analysis. You even said so yourself in a previous post, ".......The rest is your relationship to the interpretation which is subject to many different views, some contradictory though all are real." You seem to be saying that interpretation from person A can contradict the same hex read by person B.

So how is this step of applying the text to the issue at hand not an important step?

Even if getting the right hex is necessary to making a reading work, so to is interpreting this hex in the right way. These two elements that make up a reading are of equal importance if you assume that there even is a right hex.

If there is no "right hex", then getting the right hex is illusion. That's my gut feeling, thought I am way too new at the Yi to stand too firmly behind that. But even if my gut feeling is wrong, there is still paramount importance on being able to interpret the right hex in the right way. Not everyone can do it. Look at the newbie readings (look at *my* readings) and you will see a lot of poking around in a fuzzy wilderness, not quite capturing the essence of what the text is actually saying...

If a friend of yours who knew little or nothing about the Yi came to you asking for a reading, would you refer him to a web site, or would you step him through a reading? I'm guessing that you'd make sure that he got a good reading, and this means that you have to be a part of the process, even if it means that you cast a hex on the computer and then provide your interpretation of how the text is speaking to the issue at hand.

So, unless you are going to tell me you are actually AI, I'm thinking that you may have to concede that the human element needs to be present.

For the readings you do for yourself, you may cast the lines on a website, but you don't let the computer interpret the meaning for you: you do that for yourself. Doesn't that support my argument about the importance of the the human element?

-tb

shubslola said:

How different can the experience be in having a reading delivered online or real-time?

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I've found no difference between virtual and real time castings. However - and this may be only my superstition - I only use a program that creates one line per click, because I want the element of time/timing to be distinct in creating the hexagram.

As far as interpretations, the same tools and references are available from an online casting as a real time casting. Most of those resources come from within ourselves, anyway.

What do humans do in divination interpretation?

Meng, I agree with you that throwing coins, splitting yarrow stick bundles or clicking a mouse are all variations of the same process... and that the issues in interpretation are more about who is doing the reading than what text is being read.

tb,
There are some basics that we are not communicating. The human element enters not in oracle interpretation but in personal relationship or how the person asking a question reacts to an answer.

As for my readings, for a long time I would just have folks think of their questions, tell me two natural numbers 1-64 and then make comments about those hexagrams and their changing line dynamics. It was the folks who found the interpretation powerful for them in exactly answering their question without them saying anything.

The translation texts can be challenging, but the Yi oracle can also be interpreted just by the line patterns themselves. In one challenge on this board, I interpreted several oracles from just the explanation of the sequence placement of the hexagram number and the hexagram line numbers. When I first was introduced to the Yi Oracle, the only human involvement was to explain how to cast the oracle and find the paragraphs in the Wilhelm that were involved--that a computer can do easily. From there it was my sense that a living spirit was talking quite personally to me giving me a sage answer.

Objectively, I was simply reading the Wilhelm text. A computer oracle, displaying paragraphs from its database can feel as personal as any human, as Meng said, the magic is within us not the human or computer assisting.

Frank

thinbuddha said:

...unless you use an Apple. Apple computers are build from rainbows, long walks on the beach and rainy days spent next to the fire.

-tb

Click to expand...

Clarify - OS 9 was built from rainbows, long walks on the beach and rainy days spent next to the fire.

Marketing vs Need in Oracles and computers

It is all marketing that invites (seduces) us to feel a particular computer is made of something romantic, like so many myths there is a different reality inside-- they are really just toxic chemicals programmed with algebra which is the magical study of the unknowns.

All truly delightful romance is in the relationship not the physical material at your fingertips.

The essence of a Yi oracle is that it has the power to relate to each of us, as we NEED it to and this transcends the interpretation texts.

Each person interpreting an oracle expresses their own relationship to the Yi in their interpretation, that is why they are each so different at times. It is part of the Yi oracle as subjective.

Portraits and sculptures have this same property. A sculpture teacher had his class each sculpt the same model. The results turned out to each be a reasonable likeness of the model, but also of each of the sculpture students as well.

Looking deep into your computer monitor for romantic answers whether to be clothed as Yi oracles or anything else misses what is most important and also available from looking deeply into your monitor--your own reflection.

More intriguing than the detail that various folks come to different interpretations from their sources is that all the many totally distinct perspectives when brought to bear upon a specific, particular oracle upon a question some real person has a need for an answer are able to each and all help answer that need through their interpretation of the Yi Oracle.

Frank

re:%26quot%3BFor entertainment purposes%26quot%3B

I have much to share on the I Ching and the answers I've received on relationships.
However, just to reply to the point made about "for entertainment purposes only"---that is included because it is mandatory.
Fortune telling of any kind is illegal in many states in the USA, and while we may not be asking for our "fortunes' to be told when we read the I Ching, or even do Tarot--every site online has to include that statement, whether they believe it themselves or not.